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Old Silk Road Is up for Grabs
As Market Builders Battle It Out

By

Hugh Pope Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

Updated May 6, 1998 1:33 a.m. ET

TASHKENT, Uzbekistan -- Some take the high road to the markets of post-Soviet Central Asia, like Karel van Brink, who is racking up his second million air miles as Colgate-Palmolive Co.'s chief salesman in the region. Others, like American soap-factory entrepreneur Paul Gussin, have to tramp the low road, across frontiers manned by corrupt border guards armed with machine guns.

Market builders of all stripes -- including an Iranian company whose detergent bears the name "Barf" (the word means "snow" in...